Senate: Recent Updates

Senate FEC reports for the fourth quarter of 2014 are now available. Web Editor Ally Flinn has compiled the chart below that provides the year-end numbers for 2014, including cash-on-hand totals for 2016 incumbents, as well as selected U.S. House Members who have been mentioned as potential Senate candidates.

Just about two years ago, many Senate observers were sounding the alarm over how “young” the Senate was. Between retirements, resignations, deaths and defeats at the polls, the Senate had seen a 44-percent turnover between 2008 and 2012. In addition, 42 members were in their first terms.

There is no official starting gun in an election cycle. Some believe that it’s the day after the last election, while others tend to look at January 1. At least symbolically, though, a new election cycle for the U.S. Senate might just begin with the first announcement by an incumbent that he/she won’t seek re-election.

As any truly seasoned political strategist knows, political parties have good election cycles and bad election cycles. A party can have a favorable political environment, a good electoral map, and few vulnerable seats that enables them to pick up seats and perhaps even the majority one year only to face exactly the opposite set of circumstances two years later. This reversal of fortune will...

There are a lot of 2014 Senate campaigns that deserve praise, including Republican Cory Gardner’s defeat of Democratic Sen. Mark Udall in Colorado, and Sen. Mitch McConnell’s 15-point victory over Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky. There is one race, though, that should be singled out for a number of reasons, and that is GOP Sen. Pat Roberts’ campaign in Kansas...

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In an academic paper, Dr. James E. Campbell, Chairman of the Political Science Department at the State University of New York-Buffalo has analyzed The Cook Political Report's pre-Labor Day House ratings going back to the Report's founding in 1984.